ART OF SHOEING. 535 



that owners of horses, and men who have charge of them, 

 should possess more correct knowledge on the proper way to 

 manage feet than prevails now, and, as a matter of course, 

 in relative degree as right knowledge becomes established 

 amongst veterinary surgeons as a body, so it will show itself 

 in a more popular form. 



It is essentially the provision of veterinary science to 

 enlarge the field of right knowledge on this most important 

 branch in its allotted sphere. And let us try to exclude 

 error, as the only way to advance truth, thence will spring 

 correct ideas, which will radiate. All that is laudable and 

 profitable to the public generally, and to the small body of 

 veterinarians specially, will spring from the banishment of 

 ignorance and prejudice. 



In no age in the history of veterinary science have we 

 evidence of such conflicting opinions, and such an unsettled 

 state of knowledge on the economy of the horse's foot and the 

 art of shoeing, as has prevailed in England during the first 

 fifty-five years of the present century. That which was 

 nobody's business, has become every one's province to possess, 

 so that everybody thinks he knows more than others, talks 

 and writes, whilst lame and worthless horses are being mul- 

 tiplied ; we may express, as our conviction, however regret- 

 able the fact, that this branch of the veterinary art has 

 suffered more within the present century than can reason- 

 ably be expected to be redeemed during the remaining part 

 of it. 



As this subject has been treated in the different numbers 

 of the Edinburgh Veterinary Review, during the past five 

 years, repetition of what has been there produced will 

 not, to any considerable extent, be had recourse to; those 

 who read the Review will do well to refer to parts in 

 which the physiology of the foot is described; and in the 



